The recall's biggest losers

Vince Lombardi, the man who taught Cheeseheads to think with clarity about the severe consequences of victory and defeat, once offered this gem about life: “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”

Scott Walker last night showed Wisconsin and the country a bunch of pretty good losers in his recall election triumph. In the spirit of tell-it-like-it-is St. Vince, POLITICO offers up a guide to the top five: Democrats, President Barack Obama, public unions, conservative critics and money monks.

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Here’s why:

“If winning isn’t everything, why do they keep score?”

Well, politics is all about keeping score — and Democrats suffered a good old-fashioned beatdown. They invested seven months of effort, tens of millions of dollars, exhausted volunteers to collect nearly 1 million signatures. Then, they litigated an extremely divisive primary and spent millions more — all to get back to exactly where they were when they started: with Walker on top.

There’s no other way to slice it: this was a crippling blow to a party in Wisconsin that not long ago controlled both U.S. Senate seats and the governor’s mansion. Sure, Walker spent gobs of money in unique circumstances to pull it out. But the psychological blow is impossible to ignore and will certainly echo in the state’s first open U.S. Senate race in 24 years.

“Obviously, the recall is a unique animal. I don’t think people will approach the question of what to do in a recall in the same way they do when they say, ‘Oh, we have an open U.S. Senate seat,’” said Rep. Tammy Baldwin, the Democrat attempting to hold retiring Sen. Herb Kohl’s seat. “It’s a very different evaluation process.”

Tell that to former Sen. Russ Feingold, who isn’t sold on that theory. “It could have effects on the presidential race, the Senate race, sure,” he said. “There’s always the risk of people being dispirited.”

There’s also the risk — actually the reality — that more than a few Democrats walked away from last night bitter at their own party. Local Democrats are already griping about what they saw as half-hearted support, at best, from Obama and the Democratic National Committee.

Republicans walked away united, motivated and organized like never before.

Democrats are right on this score: The race had absolutely nothing to do with Barack Obama. Indeed, the number of voters in Wisconsin who didn’t have strong opinions on Walker could fit in the checkout line at Kohl’s. In exit polling, voters Tuesday said they favored Obama over Republican Mitt Romney by 51 percent to 45 percent.

But make no mistake: the outcome signaled in powerful and durable ways that Wisconsin today looks exponentially more in play this fall than it did a mere month ago.

Yes, Ronald Reagan was the last Republican to win the state — 28 years ago, when Obama was 22. And yes, Obama won easily four years ago, running up a 14-point edge. But Wisconsin has voted like red-as-can-be Utah since, which helps explain why Obama ducked the recall.

Sen. Ron Johnson, running as an unabashed conservative, beat Feingold by 5 points. Walker, running hard to the right, too, won in 2010 by a similar margin, and brought with him the first all-Republican legislative majorities since 1998. The big reason: a huge surge in the percentage of self-described conservatives to 37 percent of voters, up 10 points from four years earlier.